One Man Studio

Sunday Meskin Measures.

Today we interupt our regular General Electric series for an earlier story by George Roussos from Kirby Publications' Golden West LOve. I am not the 'boy who cried Meskin' but I do see some influence of James Robinson's precense here. Robinson was the penciller/inker who worked with Meskin (and sometimes Roussos on various series for Standard in the late forties (which you can find by following the links). The inking gets into what some of the art spotters call Simon & Kirby studio inking style. The Kirby from S&K has noting to do with the publishers name, by the way.

Temped By Dangerous Luxury

Friday Comic Book Day.

Having shown some Vesta West episodes by Ray Bailey yesterday, this might be a good moment to share three Ray Bailey romance stories from the Harvey line. Both were done after his newspaper strip Tom Corbett was stoped in 1954. His Caniff influenced style is often mistaken for that of Lee Elias, but underneath they couldn't be more diffrent. It seems to me that Lee Elias is in essence a cartoony artist and Ray Bailey as realist. The difference if mainly visible in how they draw women.

Early Days, Big Dreams

Thursday Story Strip Day.

Two leftovers. The two Famous Fiction Sundays were scanned when I was doing the Famous Fiction stories by Chad Grothkopf. Although these are credited to him as well, he had already left the strip by then and was replaced by someone with a duller, more common style. The three Vesta West strips after that are more interesting. Vesta West was started by Fred Maegher, who would later find comic book fame as the artist of Straight Arrow. He was followed by Ray Bailey, whose work on this strip, Bruce Gentry, Tom Corbett and on to comic books has been documented on this blog exstensively. In these three samples, we can see his progress as an artist in the early forties. Baley started out as an assistant to Milt Caniff (and as such even contributed a lot to his work and style in the mid forties). If I ever do a book on Caniff followers and imitators it will be to give artists such as Bailey their moment in the sun.

Clickbait

Wednesday Illustration Day.

A couple of weeks ago I shared some of Frank Godwin's illustrations from Liberty magazine in the forties. For more of these and samples of his comic strip work, follow the link.

The Orange Peril

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

He is the head of his empire, has the tendency to say the weirdest things, tries to hold together his gang but he can't, his face is a weird shade of orangy yellow and people call him some kind of dick. No, it's not who you think it is, it's Mort Walker's late sixties captain Boner. Started in 1968, Boner's Ark was the lastest adventure from the comic strip family that had brought you Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois, Mrs. Fitz' Flats and Sam's Strip. It told the adventures of a clumsy captain and his animal crew, adrift at sea like Noah once was. But instead of two animals of every kind, on this ship there was only one of each. Sounds like someone had ordered some kind of ban. Oh - and the name Boner was chosen in a period when it still meant what we now call a blooper, not the other thing you are thinking of.

Anyway, Boner's Ark was a delightfull strip which I have always liked. Especially the first few years, when Mort Walker was still doing (most of) the drawing. It provided an outlet for his weirder (and even more poetic) sense of humor. It stated in March 1968 and ended in 2000. After a couple of years the strip was continued by studio regular Frank Johnson. According to the Lambiek Comiclopedia he ghosted the comic from 1971 to 1982, and then continued it for another eightteen years, this time credited. Until 1982 at least, the gags were provided by the Walker writers, maybe after that as well.

And maybe it is good to note that the self-obsessed female pig with star ambitions appeared here 8 years before miss Piggy.